Government has failed to deliver on education - Minority
The Minority in Parliament has said the quality education, proper management and rational use of educational resources promised by the government as part of its better Ghana agenda have failed to materialise.
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It said rather, what Ghanaians had experienced were mismanagement, persistent arrears of funds, frequent industrial action and corruption in the sector, leading to loss of confidence and trust.
Addressing a news conference in Accra Tuesday, the Minority Spokesperson on Education, Professor Dominic Fobih, said during the 2012 electioneering, President John Dramani Mahama promised to eliminate the remaining 60 per cent of schools under trees, ensure a 100 per cent access for all children of school age, rapidly expand access to quality education, work to attain universal access to secondary education and construct 200 new community day secondary schools.
He said the President also promised to establish 10 new colleges of education, review the capitation grant to fulfil the constitutional imperative of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) policy, among other things.
According to Prof Fobih, who was a Minister of Education in the J.A. Kufuor government, the President had failed to fulfil all those promises, adding that on the contrary, Ghanaians had witnessed "a horrendous tale of non-performance" in the sector.
Frequent strikes
Prof Fobih said there had been far too many strikes and demonstrations in the sector, which had affected academic work and also undermined quality and confidence in the public school system.
He said the University Teachers Association of Ghana ( UTAG), the Polytechnic Teachers Association of Ghana (POTAG), the National Association of Graduate Teachers and the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) had, at various times, agitated over unpaid salaries and allowances, subsidies and unfulfilled promises.
"This is so because in the scheme of things, the government has relegated educational matters and concerns to a footnote," he contended, adding that the major source of financing education was seriously depleted, starved of statutory funds and weakened.
He intimated that the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) had been denied its statutory funds without regard to the act that established it.
Prof Fobih said subsidies for feeding senior high school students were always in arrears, while teachers' pension supplement and transfer grants were in default.
Quality
He recalled the 2012 electioneering and the ensuing 2013/2014 academic year when the debate on the reversal of the years students attended secondary school from four years to three years was on and said the position taken by the government at the time was that quality assurance had nothing to do with longevity of stay in school.
"Many years down the lane, the quality promised has become an illusion at both the basic and secondary levels. The government has failed to match words with relevant action," he further contended.
He also touched on the 200 new day SHSs the President promised to build and the 10 colleges of education and asked if 20 of them had been completed.
Cost of education
Prof Fobih said under the Mahama-led administration, the cost of education was becoming unbearable and out of the reach of the ordinary Ghanaian.
He indicated that whereas in the 2011/ 2012 academic year SHS term fees was about GH¢271, in the 2015/ 2016 school year it is GH¢724.50, about 170 per cent increase.
The case of university fees, he said, was not different, adding that the astronomical increase in the cost of accessing education was unrealistic when compared to the income levels of Ghanaians.
Technical universities
In Prof Fobih’s opinion, the creation of 10 technical universities to train top management level technical and vocational personnel, at the expense of middle-level technical manpower which was critical to the country's development, showed the government's lack of appreciation of the challenges in technical and vocational education.
